


Percolation

by muse_in_absentia



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Community: rs_games, Fluff, M/M, R/S Games 2016
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-27 21:32:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8417626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/muse_in_absentia/pseuds/muse_in_absentia
Summary: R/S Games 2016 - Day 21 - Team TimeSometimes love doesn't happen all at once, but rather accumulates drip by drip until it overflows and you have no idea how it got all over the place.





	

**Author's Note:**

> **Team:** Time  
>  **Title:** Percolation  
>  **Rating:** PG  
>  **Warnings:** None  
>  **Genres:** Coffee Shop AU , Fluff  
>  **Word Count:** 3800  
>  **Summary:** Sometimes love doesn't happen all at once, but rather accumulates drip by drip until it overflows and you have no idea how it got all over the place.  
>  **Notes:** A huge thank you to LW, for more things than I have time and space to list.  
>  This story takes place in 2002, as would be accurate for the age of the characters at the time. (Hence the strange pop-culture references)  
>  **Prompt:** #49 - "One day you'll find the right person at the right time and place, then wonder why it took you so long to find the right companion when they've been there all along." - Marisa Stein

Tuesday:

There is a small coffee shop, unoriginally named The Drip, on the corner of Main and 2nd street. It could be any coffee shop. There are hundreds just like it. Thousands. The coffee was mediocre, the food was warm and cheap and just a step above edible. The walls were brick, the tables were scuffed and scarred, the dark wood cracked in places. The chairs creaked with the weight of history settling down into them, one customer at a time.

Some days the barista was the small, dusky skinned elderly woman in the floral apron that she wore in direct violation of the dress code, but that no one had the heart to tell to stop. Sometimes, the surly teenager with the pink streak in her hair and the nose piercing who tried to look tough and cried at The Lion King.

In the back corner, farthest away from the counter, sitting under the new speakers that had been installed just a handful of years earlier, replacing the old radio that had worn out and played little beyond static from it's place atop the bakery display, was a table, more dilapidated than the rest. A relic that was the last to be replaced as things were modernized, updated or repaired. There were four sets of initials carved into its underside in the shaky hand of young boys with their first taste of freedom; the kind of freedom that tasted like sweets bought with saved pocket money and sounded like trading cards in bike spokes; scraped knees and mischief in their eyes.

The speakers were spilling out top 40 songs, playing _A Thousand Miles_ by Vanessa Carlton barely loud enough to be heard over the hiss of the espresso machine.

At the table sat a man, nearly as dilapidated as the table, with streaks of grey in his dark blond hair, a book, the spine cracked, settled next to his regular cup of earl grey. Occasionally he would glance up as a patron squeezed too close on their way to a free seat, or to grab a refill, only to turn back to his book once they were past.

While he sat there, a whirlwind of a man with long dark hair came spilling into the shop and flung himself into the seat beside the man with the book who didn't even bother to look up, simply moved his tea out of the way of flailing elbows as the newcomer draped himself across the table, heaving a sigh.

"Remus," the dark haired man whined, drawing out the vowels, wheedling.

With all the resignation of familiarity Remus very carefully placed a marker in his book and placed it in the tattered briefcase laying open at his feet on the uneven hardwood floor before turning to his friend.

"So tell me, Sirius, why exactly did I sign up for this again?" he asked just as the newest barista, a tiny waif of a boy with intentionally unevenly cut hair falling into his face, set a cup of mocha with extra sugar down on the table.

"Because you, Pete, James and I have been meeting at this table every Friday since we were twelve?" Sirius hedged, looking hopeful.

"It's Tuesday, Sirius."

"I'm old, you can't expect me to remember these things."

"You're forty-two, senility has hardly set in yet."

Sirius pouted at him in an overly dramatic approximation of a two year old, grey eyes remarkably large, lower lip jutting, pretending to quiver.

Remus appeared utterly unaffected, simply arching a single eyebrow at him and waiting until Sirius sighed and sat up straight, sipping at his mocha.

Picking at a cranberry muffin that had magically appeared on the table during Sirius' temper tantrum Remus sighed, feigning exasperation.

"I know you're dying to tell me, so just get it over with. How was your date with – Kevin, was it? - last night?"

Sirius dropped his head to the table with a thunk, sloshing mocha all over the place. Remus simply mopped it up with his napkin and waited.

"It was terrible."

With a small sympathetic hum Remus peeled the paper wrapper off the second muffin, split it carefully down the middle before slathering it in honey and pushing it towards Sirius who took a huge bite, eyes closing for a moment.

"All he wanted to do was talk about himself. And he didn't have very many interesting things to say on the subject. I mean, he didn't like chocolate, Remus," Sirius whined, crumbs scattering across the table, and Remus, who just rolled his eyes and brushed himself off. "How can I trust a man who doesn't like chocolate?"

"You poor thing," Remus crooned, just the hint of mocking coming through in his tone of voice as he patted Sirius on the top of his head. "Come on, then. Come back to mine. We'll order takeaway and you can sulk on my couch and watch Ice Age while I grade these papers."

"Indian?" Sirius asked, draining the last of his mocha, leaning into the hand still scratching at his scalp lightly, eyes still closed.

"Only if you promise not to spill your lassi all over my papers again."

"That was _one time_ ," Sirius grumbled, tossing his head and letting his hair fall back into place once Remus stopped petting him and started packing up. "And I still can't believe you're a teacher now."

"Yes, Sirius, it was one time," Remus said dryly as he struggled with the clasps on his briefcase, stiff fingers fumbling the latches twice before managing to click it closed. "But it was one time _last week_."

Sirius, who had been watching Remus struggle and only just managed to stop himself from reaching out to help, sighed dramatically. "Well, when you put it like that."

While Remus fought to dig his wallet out of his trousers pocket, fingers flexing twice before he managed to pull the little leather rectangle out and retrieve some money, Sirius tried not to wince. 

He remembered when those fingers were agile, holding a paintbrush or a pen and making worlds come to life. They all had at least one piece of Remus' art, gifted at various points throughout their lives. Graduations, birthdays, weddings; the birth of Harry prompted a whole series of each of them holding the baby. Watercolors, oils, occasionally charcoal when he was feeling particularly messy, until the arthritis took his fingers from him. Now he settled for teaching art to teenagers who were more interested in art until they realized they would not be getting live nude models, and would, in fact, have to learn the history behind what they were doing.

Years of experience with how stubborn Remus could be warred with his desire to help, to try and take away some of the things that caused him pain. He had learned better than to try over the years. Remus always got quiet and withdrawn and spent days obsessing that he was becoming a burden to his friends any time one of them offered to help. The first time Sirius had drawn that information out of Remus he wanted to simultaneously shake and cuddle his friend until he stopped feeling guilty for something he had no control over. Now, he was forced to pretend that it didn't hurt him to see Remus hurting, to look away until Remus had finished whatever task his traitorous hands no longer let be easy.

"Are you coming?" Remus arched an eyebrow at Sirius from the doorway, having paid while Sirius was trying to appear as though he didn't notice that holding tea and closing buckles was harder today than yesterday.

"Ice Age _and_ Indian? How could I not?"

Wednesday:

Sirius had tried stopping by to see Remus on his lunch break, only to find a substitute in his place. He stopped by The Drip and ordered Remus his earl grey to go.

Thursday:

Sirius brought hot chocolate instead, getting a wink from the tiny woman behind the counter which confused him, but he winked back, just in case.

Friday:

There were already three people sitting at their table when Sirius bounded into The Drip and dropped into his usual seat between Remus and James, the wood creaking dangerously under the sudden impact of a full grown man. Pete nodded hello, a smudge of whipped cream from his latte still at the corner of his lip.

"What's got you in such a good mood, mate?" James asked while Remus pushed a plate full of the lemon scones that they both loved towards Sirius for them to share. There was already a mug of mocha waiting for him.

"I take it your date with Kevin went well?" Peter asked, picking at his peanut butter biscuit, the plate chipped. Peter always seemed to ge the chipped plate.

"He has a new prospect," Remus said quietly, using two hands to lift his tea so that he didn't have to curl his fingers as tightly. Sirius was a little sad that it had gotten to the point where he had learned that trick, that Remus had to use it often enough he could learn it.

"Already?" James frowned, eyebrows up, one elbow on the table. 

_Can't Fight the Moonlight_ by LeAnn Rimes was playing and Sirius snorted at it softly. "Well, Kevin wasn't going to work out, and Dylan from down at the pub slipped me his number last night, so I thought I'd give it a go." He shrugged, trying to play off two dates with two different blokes in one week as normal.

"Wait, Dylan with the nose piercing?" Peter frowned, refusing to meet Sirius' eye.

"Yes?" Sirius drew the word out, halfway between questioning and imploring.

"I'm fairly sure he's married," Peter said gently, putting down his latte and patting Sirius on the arm. "From what I hear he propositions guys when his wife is out of town."

With a groan Sirius dropped his head onto Remus' shoulder. "Why is it so hard to find a bloke that's interesting, thinks I'm worth more than my face, doesn't ask about my family, isn't jealous of you lot and isn't already spoken for?"

"Maybe you're looking too hard," James said softly, reaching over to sling an arm around Sirius' shoulders, pulling Remus in in the process.

"This from the man who fell in love at fourteen and married that same girl of his dreams six years later. Not all of us have your luck, James," Sirius sighed, hiding his face in the curve of Remus' neck.

Remus, for his part, had set down his tea and was running his fingers gingerly through Sirius' hair. "Maybe," he hedged, not stilling his fingers, "you should wait until you meet a nice bloke that fits what you're looking for instead of always trying to force whatever bloke happens to be available to fit that ideal. Being single for a little while isn't the end of the world, Sirius."

"Says the bloke who has never once shown any interest in anyone, ever," Sirius said. There was a playful tone to his voice, but Remus stiffened against his side anyway, pulling away slowly.

Sirius whined at the back of his throat at the loss of fingers in his hair, heat against his side, complacency in his heart. He wasn't sure why Remus had moved, or why he was slowly, stiffly, standing up and throwing some money on the table.

Without a word Remus turned and walked out of The Drip, his friends all watching him go.

"You berk!" James hissed, setting his coffee down with a thunk, sloshing a little over the side of the mug.

"Wait, what did I do?" Sirius asked, frowning at James who was looking at him with little lines between his eyes, glasses slipping down his nose, eyebrows up. It was the look he had always given Harry as a small child when he tried to say that the mud got on the floor because the dog they didn't have tracked it in. A touch sad, a touch disbelieving, a touch astounded.

"You completely oblivious prat!" James continued loudly, completely ignoring Sirius, who turned to Peter for help.

"All right, James, we've established that he's an oblivious git, but the barista is starting to look frightened, and I'd rather you didn't get us banned. Oh, and you owe me ten quid."

James sank back, grumbling into his coffee while Sirius looked back and forth between his friends hoping for someone to clue him in as to what had just happened. 

A strange silence settled between them, the sort that can only happen in a public setting. The sounds of the espresso machine blending with the music and the idle chatter of other patrons to make a sort of white noise that filled in the cracks of what they weren't saying to each other.

Sirius drummed his fingers on the table, just barely resisting the urge to bite at his nails. There was a spot of petrol beneath one of them, and he focused on it, feeling like the world had spun off its axis in the last few minutes, and not sure how to right it again.

Finally, when he couldn't take it anymore he sighed heavily. "Does someone want to tell me how I buggered this up?"

That set James off muttering to himself again, and Sirius smacked him across the shoulder. "Either help a mate out, or knock it off. We've established I have no idea what I've done. I'm not sure why this time should be any worse than all the other times I've buggered things up."

Peter sighed, draining the last of his latte. "Do you remember when Marlene asked James out, back when we were kids?"

"You mean when he was so far gone on Lily it took her asking three times for him to even realize that she was chatting him up?" Sirius snorted.

"Now," Peter continued, ignoring James' pained groan and Sirius' smirk. "What do you think would have happened if Lily had kept turning him down indefinitely. Would he be out shagging anything that came his way?"

"Of course not," Sirius chuckled. "The sap would probably _still_ be mooning around hoping, turning down anyone who so much as looked at him."

The air was very suddenly missing from his lungs; the taste of coffee at the back of his throat was tinged with bile. "Remus is in love?" He whispered, voice tight as he fought to breathe.

"I hate you," James hissed at Peter. "Why didn't I see this coming?"

"Ten quid," Peter replied calmly.

While money changed hands, James grumbling all the while about useless best mates costing him money, Sirius was staring at the tabletop, their tabletop, one of his favorite places in the world, trying to remember how to breathe.

"If I were you," Peter said very softly to Sirius, pushing the last of the lemon scones in his direction, "I would think really hard about why that piece of information makes you look like you've choked on a lemon seed."

"Well, won't it be strange if Remus is suddenly not around anymore, all shacked up with some bird." He paused. "Or bloke. He's never mentioned."

James dropped his head to the table with a thunk.

"James is married, and he's not around any less." Peter sighed, sounding far too rational for Sirius' mental state. "I was probably around _more_ for that brief time I was married to Emma. Why does Remus bother you this much?"

Lungs found air in a coffee scented stutter. "Oh bloody buggering fuck!"

Peter raised an eyebrow carefully and James silently handed over another ten quid.

Saturday:

Sirius walked past the door to The Drip at least a dozen times, but couldn't make himself go in.

Sunday:

"It has come to my attention that I may owe you an apology."

"James or Pete?" Remus asked dryly, indicating that it was okay if Sirius sat.

Dropping a plate of double chocolate cookies with orange glaze onto the table, Sirius slid into his usual seat and took a deep breath, holding it for a moment before letting it out in a long whoosh.

"Both. Neither. They were both rather vehement in pointing out that I'm an oblivious plonker. I'd apologize for that, too, but we've known each other for thirty-one years, and if you haven't figured that out about me by now that's on you, not me." Sirius flashed a sharp grin that felt like it had been cut into his face, a grimace hiding behind his casual humor.

 _A Moment Like This_ by Kelly Clarkson was crackling through the speakers. The steamer for the milk sputtered and gurgled. Sirius paused while the barista, a dark skinned man in his early twenties with a tattoo of a spiral nebula on his wrist, set down Sirius' mocha.

"I did, in fact, know what I was getting myself into with you, Sirius," Remus replied quietly once the barista had gone back to the counter to take orders for a crowd of teenagers that spilled through the door like a swarm of bees, buzzing to each other.

There are so many things that Sirius wanted to say to that. That Remus didn't know, couldn't know, because Sirius only just figured it out himself. That curling up on Remus' couch and watching movies together was his favorite way to spend a day. That the stiff curl of Remus' fingers made his heart clench. That he'd rather have Remus petting his hair than have any other man in his bed. That every date, every joke, every cup of coffee had been a smoke screen. That the ideal he had been trying to squeeze potential date into was already Remus.

He said none of it. "I think I might be in love with you."

Remus snorted, helping himself to one of the cookies. "Took you long enough."

"Wait, you knew?"

Gentle eyes and gentler smile. "I've know for the last two decades, Sirius. We've all been waiting for you to catch up."

Sirius' pulse did a quick stutter step. "Then why did you let me drape myself all over you? Cuddle on your sofa? I've been inadvertently taking advantage of you for years. Decades, apparently."

"Maybe," Remus paused, closed his eyes for a minute. Sirius prepared himself to have his heart broken by his best friend. "Maybe because I wanted to be taken advantage of." Remus finished softly, quickly, throwing the words out into the wind and tensing, looking like he was waiting for them to blow back in his face.

Sagging, Sirius dropped his head into his hands, letting out a nearly hysterical laugh, choked off, gasped back in. "How long," he whispered, the words hissing between his fingers.

"Probably sometime between when you ran me over with your bike and when we ended up in detention together for putting that frog into Pete's desk."

"Remus," Sirius breathed, the bands around his chest releasing all at once. "That was the first day we met."

Remus looked down into his tea mug, his face doing something that Sirius couldn't interpret, which was unusual in and of itself. "Well, it did take me until you were asking Jenny Watkins to the prom to figure it out."

"That's still twenty-six years ago."

"I know. We've all had to learn patience with you, Sirius, in many different ways. Besides, it's not as if..." Remus trailed off, poking at some cookie crumbs before squaring his shoulders and reaching over, putting his hand over Sirius', lacing their fingers together. "Besides," he started again. "it's not as if I haven't had this. Had you. More of you than any of those blokes you tried to date. It was enough."

Sirius stared at the table, at their fingers interwoven on top of scuffed wood. The same table that they had all escaped to that day when they were eleven and on top of the world; that day they had all decreed they were friends by choice, not chance. The same table that James sat at and declared he was in love with Lily Evans and would marry her someday, the same table he then announced his engagement to Lily at six years later. The same table that Sirius had come out at. The same table that Peter introduced them to Emma at, and later drew up his divorce papers at. The same table that Remus graded his papers at, and sketched his friends on napkins when his fingers would allow. Sitting at the same table where nearly all the large events in their lives had happened, and all the little ones that filled the spaces in between, Sirius squeezed the hand that was in his gently, letting the contentment settle into his bones.

"It's not enough, Remus. You should have everything."

"And I should let you be involved in that, somehow?"

"No, you really shouldn't. I'm nowhere near good enough for you." Sirius shrugged, tugging at their still joined hands. "However, James wasn't nearly good enough for Lily, either, and it seems to have worked out all right for them."

Remus gave a long suffering sigh, but there was a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "Well, I suppose if Lily can put up with that plonker you might just be worth my time."

Dropping his head onto Remus' shoulder Sirius took a deep breath. "You know you don't have to say yes just because we're friends," he whispered, afraid to look up and see Remus' response in his eyes.

"Sirius." Sirius didn't move. "Sirius, please look at me."

Very slowly Sirius picked his head up, only to have Remus tangle his finger in Sirius' hair, lean in and kiss him.

It was a tiny thing, barely a brush of lips, but it tasted of coffee and cookies, of history and hope.

Sirius whined in the back of his throat when Remus pulled back, smiling. "Sirius, when have I ever given you something just because you wanted it." 

"Does that mean if I wanted you to take me home so we could snog on the sofa you wouldn't do it?" Sirius pouted, still half snuggled into Remus' side.

"I said 'just because you wanted it'. Now, if I want it too, that's a different matter." Remus grinned, tugging Sirius to his feet and leaning in to whisper, "Let's go. I want to see if I can make you whimper."

Sirius shivered, letting himself be hauled off his seat and herded towards the door. "How did I not know I was in love with you?"

Remus laughed, making Sirius question his ability to breathe. "Don’t worry," Remus replied. "I won't let you forget again."


End file.
